Considering a HAL transfer from Vancouver to Sea Tac

[Kfrech]

Any idea what time the bus departs Canada Place?

 

Any other experiences with this service?

[CruiserBruce]

The buses depart when full, which will depend on demand.  It is not every XX minutes.

[rj42]

You can look at quickcoach.com, which also goes from Canada Place to Seatac.

 

Personally, I’d spend the day in Vancouver (luggage storage service at Canada Place), take the 5:30 Amtrak to Seattle, where you’ll see gorgeous water and sunset views, you don’t have to get off at the border and get your bags scanned, and at the station in Seattle it’s a short walk to light rail going to Seatac. Unlike the bus, you can walk around the train (I hang out in the dining car), and the restrooms aren’t as awful. 
 

If you live in CA, AZ, or NV, flying out of Bellingham on Allegiant is also a cheap and convenient option, and the bus and train both stop there.  If you want a more authentic and adventurous Alaska cruise experience, Bellingham also has weekly service to Alaska on Alaska State ferries. 

[Krazy Kruizers]

Many times we have taken HAL's transfer from Vancouver to Seattle.  They usually leave around 10 AM -- stop at the airport first around 2 - 2:30.  You are dropped off far from the gates and have to haul your luggage if you can't find a porter to your check in area for your airline.

 

We stay on the bus which takes us to our hotel for the night.  Then we catch an early flight home to Pittsburgh.

[Roz]

I've used Quick Shuttle in the past and was very satisfied with their service.  This past spring, on the advice of posters in this forum,  I booked HAL's transfer.  Never again.  I didn't get the service others reported. Guess I'm not in the popular girls' clique. 

[martincath]

Unfortunately HAL, like all other lines, subcontracts bus-related services to other companies (including QuickShuttle as well as various other local charter and tourbus people). I recall Roz posting about how dreadful her experience was - IIRC there were too many people booked for one coach, but not enough for two, so some of you ended up in a very cramped minibus with no AC?

 

But there have also been similar rants about QS - indeed I recall one that was so extreme it got pulled from the forum! Any individual driver can suck, bus can have broken equipment, etc. etc. etc. Personally I find QS to be a bunch of weasels when it comes to how they operate - deliberately obfuscating what they provide onboard (naming your 'play movies on the bus' service 'Y-Fi' so that anyone calling to ask "Do your buses have WiFi?" can be lied to with a straight face was their most devious moment, but their worst move which guaranteed I'd never use them again was when they swapped their pricing from CAD to USD with no warning and kept the numbers the same - instantly gouging another 25% out of all pax at the time, and these guys are a local Canadian company, not a US company operating in Canada like Amtrak. Even Greyhound sold fares from Vancouver in CAD). But I digress - different folks have had crappy experiences with all the companies who run this route, so anyone with a lot of trips under their belt tends to have a favourite one which hasn't screwed them over personally... yet 😉

 

So, while there are no guarantees that any given service will live up to it's reputation, on paper the HAL transfers are superior to QS because they have no stops other than the border and the airport (therefore should be faster, as even the 'express' QS service stops several times) and, while it's not guaranteed, there is also the possibility that you can get a 'sealed bus' transfer where you don't even have to do immigration & customs - in these cases the buses leave from the pier without you officially entering Canada and head straight to the US, where CBP do a token verification that the bus has not made any stops and let you through without the need to drag bags inside.

 

Bolt, Greyhound, QS cannot offer this on their regularly scheduled services as they all have stops in Canada - only with a cruiseline transfer is it possible, as you start in the secured-and-administered-by-the-US part of the pier and don't stop until reaching actual US territory. EVERY other bus the default is that you must drag your own bags, with no porters available and the driver not helping you, from curb to inspection and back to curb. Sometimes you get lucky, a driver will help with bags or if the border is really busy CBP might skip the bag check (IME this only happens when everyone onboard is a US/Canadian citizen so low risk) - once in a blue moon they even send agents out to the buses and check passports onboard instead of making you get off, but you should assume the norm is 'schlep your own bags' and be pleasantly surprised if you don't have to.

 

While I agree that a day of sightseeing and the evening train is the nicest way to go, if all you want to do is head south right away with minimal hassle a cruise transfer definitely meets the criteria. A rental car would be faster - you can pick one up at 8am if you self-disembark, and because you can choose to use any of the border crossings and only have to worry about yourselves rather than a busload of other pax you'll probably spend less time waiting there too - but you'd have to schlep your own bags to the car then figure out an unfamiliar city with no highways, so it's not for everyone. If you don't mind driving though, even 2 people in a car can save money compared to a transfer or QS ticket - and sometimes you can get ludicrously cheap deals on US-plate cars which need to get back home, just keep shopping around for rental rates and jumping on deals.